Superior PC customers who wish to tweak how their GPU performs are being focused with malware (opens in new tab), researchers are saying. 

A lot of web sites have been detected promoting a fraudulent model of MSI Afterburner, which as a substitute installs cryptocurrency miners and infostealers on the affected endpoints (opens in new tab).

MSI Afterburner is a program that enables customers to change how their graphics playing cards behave, permitting customers to tweak overclocking, monitor the cardboard’s temperature, and lots of different duties. Although it was constructed by PC maker MSI, it really works with virtually any graphics card, which quickly propelled it to stardom within the gaming and PC power-user communities – however now additionally appears to have made it a goal for criminals. 

Mining cryptos with GPUs

Cybersecurity researchers from Cyble say they’ve found greater than 50 web sites pretending to be the official MSI Afterburner web site in simply the final three months. 

The websites typically push cryptocurrency miners for Monero, and an information-stealing trojan referred to as RedLine Stealer. Many of the found domains are typosquatted, it was added, however there have been additionally some that had nothing to do with MSI, in any way. 

Excessive-end graphics playing cards are an necessary device for cryptocurrency miners, as they permit them to generate the dear tokens extra effectively. That’s why, within the final couple of years, the costs of flagship GPU fashions have been steadily rising, whereas the availability of the playing cards was all however depleted. It is usually why focusing on MSI Afterburner with a cryptocurrency miner is sensible.

Nevertheless, since Ethereum (the world’s second-largest blockchain community by market capitalization, second solely to Bitcoin) moved from proof-of-work (mining) to proof-of-stake (staking), the recognition of mining has been declining. The rising prices of electrical energy and the bear market cryptocurrencies are presently experiencing (bitcoin dropped from $69,000 final November to roughly $16,000 this November) have all performed their half.

Nonetheless, for cybercriminals who’d hijack different folks’s endpoints for mining, the tokens’ worth fluctuations imply little or no. 

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